1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to arrangements for forming bumper structures of automobiles, more particularly, to an arrangement for forming a rear bumper structure of an automobile of for example, the station wagon type having a rear door.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A conventional automobile is provided with front and rear bumpers, each of which is formed in a body and fixed on a chassis and body construction thereof, as disclosed in, for example, the Japanese utility model application published before examination under publication number 59-110256.
Recently, in an automobile having a baggage room formed in the rear portion of a body thereof and provided with a rear door, such as a station wagon type automobile, it has been proposed to lower the floor level of the baggage room for the purpose of facilitating to load and unload baggages. The automobile having such lowered floor level is accompanied with an opening which is provided for the baggage room at the rear end of the body to be closed by the rear door and shaped to extend to a lower position of the body, together with the rear door also shaped to extend to the lower position. On the other hand, front and rear bumpers mounted on the automobile are required to be fixed on the body at an ordinary level regardless of the lowered floor in the baggage room in view of the relative relationship with bumpers of other automobiles.
Accordingly, in an automobile having a baggage room provided with a rear door such as a station wagon type automobile and with a lowered floor level in such a manner as described above, a position at which a rear bumper is to be mounted on a body of the automobile stretches over both the lower portion of the body and the lower end portion of the rear door which is closed. Consequently, it is considered for the automobile having the baggage room provided with the rear door and the lowered floor level to divide the rear bumper into a lower member fixed to the lower portion of the body and an upper member attached to the lower end portion of the rear door.
The automobile provided with such a bisected rear bumper, however, will come upon a problem that impact load dealt to the upper member of the rear bumper on the occasion of a rear end collision thereto is directly propagated to the rear door and thereby the rear door may be deformed or damaged.